A pandemic is not a war. But like a war, it upends life wherever it touches.
When the pandemic is truly over, it will be because vaccinations and herd immunity stopped its out of control spread and crushed its variants. It will be a fade out, not an unconditional surrender.
But when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday said vaccinated people no longer have to wear masks just about everywhere indoors and outdoors — it effectively marked the end of the pandemic.
Axios called it "Liberation Day." CNN's Zachary Wolf said "This feels like the COVID version of VJ day."
While it's not quite the same as "V" days past, the moment when the long-ubiquitous mask became largely optional for many of us is the closest thing we'll have to a "V-COVID Day."
The mask was everything
There might not have been strangers kissing strangers in Times Square, but the CDC's announcement that vaccinated people can go maskless provided the ultimate symbolic victory for pandemic-weary Americans.
The mask has been the lodestar of the pandemic.
No issue, not even vaccines, has been as contentious as the mask.
As soon as cities began locking down in March 2020, masks were a political flashpoint.
The US health system under President Donald Trump was caught flat-footed in its pandemic response, and personal protective equipment was hard to come by. So the CDC and the surgeon general misled the public at first, saying that masks are ineffective at stopping the spread of COVID.
That was a ploy to buy time for the country to replenish its PPE supply and save masks for health care workers and first responders. And once health officials did a complete about face and mandated masks in almost every situation outside of the home, the mask wars were born.
Trump and prominent conservative media personalities painted mask-wearing as virtue-signaling at best and the coming of a totalitarian globalist superstate at worst.
Many on the left saw people not wearing masks as cold-hearted misanthropes with blood on their hands. Some still insist on outdoor mask mandates for children that have little scientific basis.
The mask wars led to assaults, arrests, and court battles. To say nothing of the fistfights.
When Trump emerged from the hospital during his bout with COVID, among the first things he did was step out onto a White House balcony and make a performance out of removing his mask.
Masks provided the dumbest culture war battlefield, and it defined the US' pandemic experience, but they can also be the ultimate sign that the fight is over.
Don't be a mask-war dead-ender
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow said on her show Thursday night: "I feel like I'm going to have to rewire myself so that when I see someone who is out in the world without wearing a mask I don't instantly think, you are a threat. Or you are selfish or you are a COVID denier and you definitely haven't been vaccinated."
It's to Maddow's credit that she puts the onus on herself to "rewire" her mask biases.
Parkland shooting survivor and anti-gun activist David Hogg ought to take notes.
Hogg tweeted Friday that he'd continue masking outside not for any public health concerns, but because "the inconvenience of having to wear a mask is more than worth it to have people not think I'm a conservative."
That line of thinking gives the game away. For Hogg the mask isn't a public health consideration, the use of which is dictated by science, but rather a partisan badge of righteousness, and the maskless are just MAGA baddies without the red hats.
President Joe Biden sounded very much the war-weary president when he said: "We've had too much conflict, too much bitterness, too much anger, too much polarization of this issue about wearing masks."
The president implored Americans to "put it to rest."
I'm rarely one to heed the words of any politician, but Biden's right.
Some people will choose to continue to wear masks in low-risk situations for a short period of time, some may continue to wear masks in any crowded public place for the rest of their lives — as they do in many countries — to protect against viruses and diseases that have nothing to do with COVID. Don't treat them like they're obedient sheep or panicky Luddites.
Other people will never wear a mask again unless explicitly required to them. Don't judge them as though they don't care about COVID or experienced no suffering through the pandemic.
Pat yourself on the back, America. We're horribly divided by ideological tribalism, but we somehow have been a world leader at producing and delivering COVID vaccines.
The mask was the ultimate divider, but the end of its universality ever-so-briefly unites us in victory.
